Klimt was a Viennese painter and a leader in the Secession movement in the early 1900s. The Kiss is the most famous painting of his Golden Phase, in which he used gold and silver leaf to embellish his paintings.

Painted in 1889, Van Gogh was already patient at the St Remy mental asylum when he painted ‘Starry Night’. He said of this painting: ‘Why should these points of light in the firmament… be less accessible that the dark ones on the map of France? We take a train to go to Tarascon or Rouen and we take death to reach a star.’ He committed suicide the following year.

Da Vinci drew this figure to represent the ideal proportions of the human body, as set down by the Roman architect Vetruvius.